Why did Brendan Fraser leave the Hollywood ‘Star System’?
The American actor, who has relaunched his career with ‘The Whale’, has been missing from Hollywood... what caused him to step away?
‘The Whale,’ the new film by Darren Aronofsky, has been a true revolution.
Especially for its protagonist, Brendan Fraser.
The man from Indianapolis is competing for the first time in his career for the Oscar for Best Actor.
Fraser is one of the favorites to win the award and has received praise from critics and the public. At the Venice Festival, he received a six-minute ovation from the audience, demonstrating the actor’s excellent portrayal in this film.
After such a great performance, many have questioned why the actor fled Hollywood for so long.
But Fraser has his reasons; issues with his own health and his mothers who has since passed away, personal issues, and being the target of sexual harassment have been cited as reasons he left and stayed away. A journey from which, according to his last performance, he seems to have recovered successfully.
The rationale for Brendan Fraser's retirement
The sexual harassment occurred two decades ago in 2003, and although Fraser did not speak publically about the incident for years, it was deeply traumatic. During a meal at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the former president of the entity, Philip Berk, assaulted him with a series of non-consensual sexual touching. “I felt like a kid with a lump in my throat,” Fraser said describing the event.
However, Berk has always denied the event, leading some to doubt that Fraser was telling the truth.
“I did not want to relive what it made me feel,” said the actor in this regard. It didn’t stop there, as Brendan began to conceive of a certain boycott by the organization led by Berk.
His divorce and the death of his mother, other key factors
Just a few years later, in 2009, Fraser and his wife decided to divorce, which meant a new bump in the actor’s career. And if that wasn’t enough, a TV appearance in 2016 in which he appeared utterly devastated and unable to speak after the death of his mother, really kept him away from a return to the spotlight.
All the hard personal moments came when Fraser was at the height of his stardom. His performances in ‘George of the Jungle’ and in ‘The Mummy,’ which forced him to undergo surgery when he refused to have doubles in action scenes, led him to be one of the most well-known Hollywood celebrities.
A label that, decades later, seems to have recovered since critics saw him as one of the Oscar candidates, a fact confirmed by those who have seen ‘The Whale,’ where he played a man who weighs over 400 pounds who questions his life in a one-room drama.